How Much Beer Can You Drink Without Hurting Your Workout?

The night before the 2016 Boston Marathon I drank seven beers. The night before that I also drank seven beers. There's a good chance I had roughly seven beers the night before that. Hey, the race happens at the end of a long weekend. When Patriot's Day came around, I proceeded to run the slowest marathon of my life (that didn't include at least nine miles of injured limping). It wasn't a disaster from the gun, but I ran the last six miles with every muscle in my legs feeling like it was locked in a Vise-Grip.

All those excessive, delicious, and ultimately regrettable beers weren't part of my usual pre-race preparations. I was on my third marathon in seven months and running this one "just for fun," which mean overindulging on Notch Pilsners, Night Shift Awake coffee porters, and Tree House Julius IPAs, and worrying about the consequences later.

Now, a year and half later, I'm running this weekend's New York City Marathon on Michelob Ultra's team and reexamining what it means to have a healthy relationship with beer while training for a race that is ridiculously painful even when everything goes right.

"People think you have to say no to things when you're training, but that's a good way to burn out quickly."

Beer Olympics

As a committed nerd, I started with a deep dive into the scientific research database PubMed for studies on alcohol and exercise. Apparently nobody's been studying hungover runners, but a 2014 paper from Australian Catholic University examined the effects of post-exercise consumption on muscle protein synthesis (muscle building and repair)—in essence, studying how alcohol may inhibit workout gains. Subjects exercised and then consumed alcohol (or not). Compared to the sober control group, the drinkers saw an alarming 37 percent drop in protein synthesis, potentially negating much of their recent hard work.

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Study co-author Evelyn Parr says she was inspired by amateur sports teams tendency "to consume large volumes of alcohol post-game." Her study didn't shy away from ensuring test subjects imbibed a large volume. The participants were given 1.5 grams of alcohol per kilogram of bodyweight. Convert those numbers to pounds and beers (given the 14 grams of alcohol per standard beer), that means a 195-pound person like myself would have been consuming nine and a half beers. That sounds like a hell of a party, but not my usual post-run ritual.

So I reached out to a few Olympic-caliber runners to find out how they balance beer and training. These are folks whose careers depend on being a faction of a percent better than the next man or woman. If any runners were to pass on a beer for performance purposes, it would be them.

I started with two-time 800-meter Olympian Nick Symmonds. In retirement he's training for his first marathon, the Honolulu in December. "I like to run and I like to drink beer. I'd also like to break three hours in Honolulu," said Symmonds.

When I asked Symmonds how often he frequents his "well-stocked" beer fridge—mostly pilsners, IPAs, and wheats—he said it's two or three beers a night and up to six on a weekend. "It's higher than it should be, but I try to have two days without alcohol every week," he says.

In his professional days, he enjoyed a bit less beer and cut back more when he needed to trim a little weight. "My general rule of thumb has always been: Don't wake up hungover. In moderation, beer enhances training. I think the carbohydrates are great." He also added enthusiastically that he'd love a beer sponsor. Who wouldn't?

Desiree Linden, a noted whiskey enthusiast and the seventh-place finisher at the 2016 Olympic marathon, echoed Symmonds' praise of moderation. "I honestly don't drink differently in the off-season from training," she said. For her, that's one or two drinks a couple days a week. "I find beer is easier during training, and I like how a refreshing beer cools you down after a good run." Linden favors session IPAs like Founders All-Day and Ballast Point Even Keel.

"People overthink marathon training and take it too seriously," she explains. "It should be part of balanced lifestyle and doing things you enjoy, it should be fun." Symmonds, likewise, agreed, telling me, "people think you have to say no to things when you're training, but that's a good way to burn out quickly."

But what about a pre-race beer? "Yeah, I had a beer night before the Olympic finals. It's a stressful time!"

Professional Drinking

Although he's not an Olympian (yet), I contacted one professional runner who drinks for a living: Brooks-sponsored beer-miler Lewis Kent. If you're not familiar with this torture sports, it requires running four laps on a track and chugging a beer for each lap. Despite that professional-level indulgence, Lee, like every elite I interviewed, he keeps his alcohol in check.

"For the guys I train with, beer is an incentive for a good week," said Kent. "But if you don't hit your runs, you're not going to have that beer." For Kent "that beer" is about 10 in a week, split up in twos and threes. And it may shatter your suds-soaked dreams of beer mile training to know this, but Kent, the one-time world record holder with a time of 4:47, typically practices his chugging with water and non-alcoholic beer.

"I find beer is easier during training, and I like how a refreshing beer cools you down after a good run."

All these calls for level-headed moderation seemed surprisingly reasonable, especially with the condemnations of going dry. But I was curious if somebody in the know would tell to me cut off the boozing entirely. So I called the first person you'd expect to order alcohol abstinence: a coach.

Andrew Kastor is the head coach of the Mammoth Track Club. It's an elite team in the high-altitude town of Mammoth Lakes, Calif. Men need a 2:15 marathon time to be considered. His verdict: "One or two beers an evening is fine if you're hitting your milage and feeling good," he said.

Stopping at the Gun Hill Tavern for a session IPA on a training run.

"So not seven?," I joked.

"No," he replied, then veering the conversation back on course, "if you're cramping up or your training runs suffer, maybe abstain." Cramping is a dehydration factor, he explained. "Your kidneys work overtime to process the alcohol and ramp up urination so you could be excreting too much fluid."

Beer-fueled cramps sounded painfully familiar. That Boston Marathon ran through unusually hot and sweaty weather, and in hindsight, those seven beers were a laughably dumb hydration strategy. So was the beer I chugged at Mile 20, given the cramps set in at Mile 20.5.

"Deena and I," he said—his wife is Olympic medalist and American marathon record holder Deena Kastor—"like to relax with a glass of wine. We shared one the night before she won the London Marathon."

So not seven beers the night before a marathon. Loud and clear, coach.

Relax, and Run

If you want to know how much beer can reasonably be squeezed into marathon training, the consensus is one or two regularly, and occasionally more if there's no hangover, dehydration, or weight gain.

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Looking back on my training for the New York Marathon, sure, there were a couple Friday nights where I could have cut out the last few beers before a Saturday long run. And following one 17-mile run with a beer festival was a poor form of recovery. But my usual daily beer or two—that's all, I swear—didn't seem to hurt. And when I looked at my calendar and saw a potential hangover looming in the form of a birthday party or brewery crawl, I at least scheduled my runs so the headache, sloth, and sleeping in would fall on a recovery day.

On the night before the marathon, yes, I'll have a beer. If nothing else, drinking my evening IPA follows one of marathon racing's unimpeachable rules: Nothing new for race day.

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